A Whispering Lark
by Jack.of.the.Void
Summary: Lucia was pulled from the streets as a child, given a home & a family. But when her famous mother draws her last breath, Lucia is left to a world of secrets built on the dark double-life the Dragonborn left behind. A oneshot dedicated to a concept. A small snapshot in the life of a Lucia who faced the mantles left to her. Rated T for implication only, but still not for kids.


___Hey all! So! This odd little vignette was a Christmas gift to my friend, ShotgunHero! There's a lot in here, so I'll leave the exposition I want to tell you for the A/N at the end and let the piece introduce itself._

___**As with everything else here... I don't own the Elder Scrolls or anything related. I just like playing in their world**_

The steady lull of the ocean below provided a strange frame to the bristling tension in the stone room. The girl, a child to any unknowing eyes, huffed through clenched jaws and rested her shoulders against the window frame, watching the trade ships dally in the shade of the tower. "You misunderstand me."

"Do I?" The woman behind the cedar-wrought desk cocked an amused brow at her guest. She crossed her cured, baby horker leather boots on the corner above the desk-drawers and leaned back comfortably with her hands on her head.

The girl turned her bloody eyes on the East Empire Company insignia hung ostentatiously on the wall above the liaison's head. It was every bit as intimidating an arrangement as it was intended to be. She swallowed quietly and turned back to the window. "It doesn't matter what Elisif says... Everyone knows the Shadowlark is the real power in Skyrim, now." She ground her teeth slightly, refusing to turn from the EEC Tower's view of Solitude's trading port, letting the waves' soft rhythm have its say before trying again.

"You've done well for yourself, Lucia... No one can say you haven't." She turned her cherub face, inclining her ear to the liaison in a long-forgotten fondness. "...I'm proud of you, you know. Your mother would have been, too. It wasn't so long ago that I played tag with you and your brother back in Whiterun... Times were simpler then, though."

Memory ghosted across Lucia's eyes before she settled back into her coldly professional demeanor. "I've earned my place," she supplied, as much to convince herself as the child. "And I did it without any of their magic or strength or shouts..." She shifted in her seat, pulling her feet from the desk and leaning forward on her elbows. It was a disarmingly feminine gesture. One she knew would not sway her guest. "...But the Black Hand has done just as well, has it not, Babette? The Brotherhood is still a force to be feared."

Babette scoffed slightly. "If only as the Shadowlark's right hand-"

Lucia offered a softly challenging smile and shrugged. "Fear is fear. I haven't really hindered your operations."

Babette turned sharply, her lips preparing to curl before she thought better of the gesture. "... You were given a place in the _family_, Lucia. You didn't know up from down when your mother died! Do you have any idea how worried your brother and father were?! You're lucky your brother sent for me! **I** followed your trail through the wilderness! **I** gave you a new life! New skills!"

Lucia surged out of her chair, sending the neglected warehouse inventory report to the floor. "And did you do that for me or for _her_?!"

The small vampire crossed her arms at the woman she raised, running her tongue across her fangs. "...Of course I did it for you. How could you ask me that?"

Lucia settled, running a hand through the auburn hair of her adult years, and dropped her eyes from the other's betrayed gaze. "I'm sorry, Babette. It's just... I've taken up so much in her absence. Balancing the Black Hand, the politics she left behind, the Thieves Guild, **and** my information ring..."

She let free a heavy breath, turning her back to the observant guest, and began again with a dour laugh. "If only Farkas knew what she was really involved in. If only Bram understood what his mother was. Then maybe..." Lucia turned on her heels, back to the childlike silhouette framed in the window, her composure once again solid as the stahlrim she smuggled. "But those are concerns for older times..."

She straightened, brushing off the embroidered velvet of her custom tunic, and adjusting the ostentatious rings of her right hand. The bells of the warehouse rang in their stalemate, telling the morning workers to switch for lunch. "Now, Babette," Lucia called with calculation, "what I was **about** to say before you flashed your fangs at me was... that I've spoken with my contact in Castle Volkihar. She assures me they have not caught the scent of Clan Quorra in Skyrim. No one suspects any of your blood survived Red Mountain."

The child nodded silently.

"So, did you come just to visit a friend and update a loose end? Or are you here for business as well?"

Babette offered a pensive smirk and stood from her overlook to take a seat in one of the lavish chairs in front of the design of a lark imposed against the setting sun etched into Lucia's desk. Her feet dangled above the red velvet rug as she settled in. "We've gotten another contract against Brynjolf."

Lucia growled and patiently tapped her fingers on the decorative dresser underneath the EEC coat-of-arms as she paced by. "That Oblivion-damned old man! What has he done _this_ time?"

"He left a calling card for the Nightingales in Shatter-Shield's office, after he took the ship's payroll and distributed it amongst the Argonian dock workers. You should never have let him have that book on Gentleman Jim Stacy. I may not know the Thieves' Guild... But I remember Mallory... and I do know Delvin would have had a fit, Sithis rest him."

Lucia pulled again at her auburn curls. Those and her strong jaw were the only indication she belonged to the land of the Nords. Skyrim had not been accepting to a half-blood like her, but the Dragonborn's patronage... Lucia bit her lip - _with her mother's adoption_, she begrudged - she'd learned to slice and maneuver to the top in a way no other orphan could. She nodded to Babette. "Alright. Turn down the contract, would you kindly? And I'll send word to my Guildmaster. He's a good Mer. Reliable. He'll deal with Brynjolf."

Lucia stooped to scoop up the discarded inventory report. "I'll also take a list of your proposed contracts next week, Listener." Babette nodded mechanically. "If there's no one I need to be bothered with, then send a nice basket of fruit, will you? I get so tired of just putting out fires... And send my regards to the family. I'm thankful the Night Mother chose a somewhat immortal Listener for once."

Babette took the unspoken hint and rose to brush off her dress, politely thanking her host. Lucia crossed the room, "Now if you'll excuse me," she continued as she rested her hand on the knob of an ornate cedar door, "I have an appointment with the 'Harbinger.' He should be waiting downstairs." She spat the word as though it were a bitter berry.

Babette smiled to herself as she followed Lucia. "Give your brother my regards. Bram is a sweet man."

Lucia soured. "He's NOT my brother." She clenched her jaw and looked away, right hand straying to pull her sleeve over her left.

Babette nodded, raising a parting eyebrow to the woman she'd loved like her own. "He was before you became the Shadowlark."

"He was before I figured out the _real_ legacy mother left for me to clean up! He was before... before I realized blood was stronger than a muttered promise to a child!"

Babette shook her head. "Where do you get these ideas, Lucia?"

The Shadowlark, the secret high queen of Skyrim, cleared her throat and opened the door. "It's time for you to leave, Babette."

The vampire frowned and nodded. A quiet and stinging "I love you, child" crossed her lips as she departed.

Babette wiped at her eyes as the door shut behind her. Her breath hitched and she pulled her hood up to shade her skin from the noonday sun beaming through the gilded windows of the tower.

She cast a wayward glance to her right. Leaning against the frame of the door was a slender man adorned entirely in black. His arms folded across his chest, his icy blue eyes analyzing her face. Babette shivered slightly and straightened her stance. His expression was not merely distant, but dead. Tendrils of dark hair fell into his eyes under a hood, and he wore a leather ensemble she had never seen before. The cold in his eyes, the cold in his soul, seemed to find a center - not in the man itself, but in the scarlet gleam of the long, dark blade on his back. Babette hadn't seen a dai-katana that size since her life in Morrowind... since the day the infamous Nerevarine burst into her clan's den and slaughtered her family with a sword strikingly similar... But such memories had become hard to recall as the centuries passed. With a small bow of courtesy, the ancient child took her leave.

* * *

Lucia jumped through her skin when she heard the door creak open to receive a living shadow.

She breathed relief, recognizing her second guest. "Nelkir! I've missed you!" The EEC liaison set her stacked report back into her carved inbox.

He grinned, pulling his hood away and brushing the hair from his eyes as she approached. "Hello, love."

The professional vestiges of the Shadowlark falling away, Lucia giggled slightly as she held her embrace open to the lean Nord. He vined his arms around her back and anchored her frame tightly against his own, craning his neck to bury his face into her coarse hair. Lucia pressed small kisses into his throat, feeling his pulse under her lips.

"You seem stressed..." Nelkir purred. Lucia smiled into him, taking note of how his entire chest seemed to vibrate with his deep baritone as he spoke.

"Just business," she answered him. "And Bram. He begged me for a meeting today. He says he has something important to tell me."

Nelkir huffed as he combed a hand through her locks. "That fool. What could he say that has worth to _you?_"

She pulled her head from the crook of her lover's neck, the office and the importance of her world nonexistent in his arms. She moved her hands softly to each side of his face before pulling him down to press her forehead to his.

Nelkir looked more like his father than either would care to admit. Though slim for a Nord, his intense blue eyes and strong jaw invoked memories in any who knew the late Jarl.

"You've never liked my brother, Nelkir. You even refused to play tag if he was involved, even though there weren't many of us in Whiterun."

He held the woman flush against him and covered her left hand with his right, bringing the burned flesh to his lips. "He's _not_ your brother. He proved that when he Shouted fire at you." He leaned in again, pressing kisses along her throat. "I should have cut him down back then, Love. Like I should have cut down that fool Farkas for defending Bram from me."

Lucia bit her lip, avoiding the memory. Awkward adolescent as he was, it had been Nelkir who pulled the forbidding, ebony katana from the wall and stood between her and the impetuous, fire-breathing, dragonborn child. It had been Nelkir who endured the bear-sized swings from Farkas, who had seen and understood nothing but the 'Dark Child' threatening his only son. It had been Nelkir who stole her from the situation and carried her to Danica the healer.

Her fingers curled into the lapel of his blackened leather cuirass. Her foster father had eventually learned the truth, and Bram had 'gotten his.' Farkas had done his best to apologize... but the damage had been done. Only one person's words rung true in Lucia's heart that day. Nelkir concluded that her 'father' had chosen his blood-child over her, and Lucia had seen no reason to disagree with her savior.

Nelkir became her lover that day. She'd helped him flee the mysterious incident that claimed the lives of his family not long after, and he'd covered her escape from Whiterun and into the little vampire's sheltering arms. She'd stolen the katana he still wore on his back, and he'd been the blade in the shadows that bled her enemies dry.

Everything Lucia knew about politics and deceit, everything she knew about the power of secrets... everything the Shadowlark was... had been built on what they'd accomplished together.

Lucia lifted her face to his, her small mouth open and her tongue held slightly aloft to accept his kiss. She sported a healthy blush when they parted to breathe, and she giggled to him, touching her fingertips to the small line of drool left on his lips. "Brother or no, Bram asked for my time. I am not in a place to deny Skyrim's current dragonborn Harbinger. He seems to think he knows something I don't. We'll see."

Nelkir smiled. It was an empty expression on his face. "Very well."

He let her free, and she straightened her tunic once again before heading for her office door. Lucia poked her head out and called down the hall for the Harbinger to be sent up. She touched her swollen lips and turned back to see Nelkir adjusting the ebony katana on his back. He shifted to sit comfortably in his chosen chair near the window Babette had occupied earlier. She gave him a coy smile as he ran his fingers through his lanky, shoulder-length hair, and he answered her with an overly intimate gesture made by his tongue.

She blushed again, knowing he was setting up an awkward environment for Bram to walk in on. As though on cue, a dull thud intended to be a knock sounded at her door, before a tall and somewhat hulking sandy-blonde let himself in.

Dressed in the clinking and clandestine steel 'wolf' armor famous to the Companions, Bram offered a gentle and becoming smile as he took in the sight of Lucia.

"Sister," he breathed, and bent over to scoop her up into the sort of bear-hug he'd learned from his father. "I haven't seen you in months!"

Lucia stiffened in his arms, with a murmured "Hello, Bram." Her legs involuntarily curled as he squeezed her spine with his eyes closed tight. He dropped her back down and looked around the room, his happiness dropping from his face as he took in the other man's condescending form draped into the chair. Bram's scowl reached his slate gray eyes as he gently returned the lady to the floor.

Lucia cleared her throat and patted Bram on the arm. "You remember Nelkir."

The Harbinger cocked his head to the side. "All too well," he muttered before turning his gaze back to his sister. "I need to talk to you alone, Lucia," Bram said bluntly, waving his hand toward her man.

"I'm not sending him away."

Bram's stubbled jaw tightened in a freshly-forming snarl when Nelkir rose from the ornate chair with the grace of a cat. Lucia caught a glimpse of darkness in his eye as he crossed the room to her. Snaking an arm around her back and fastening his hand on her breast, he planted wet kiss on her throat. Lucia blushed, noting the exposed vein throbbing in the Harbinger's neck and the cruel smile Nelkir gave him from the safety of her arms. "It's okay, Lover," he purred in her ear. "Let the poor Harbinger have his appointment. I'll come to you when he's done."

Lucia elbowed the smaller man in the stomach as he let her go, knocking some air from him. She gave him a warning grin and he laughed crossly, a hand to his midsection. "You minx," he shot back. "You always did like it _rough_."

Bram forced a cough and took to cracking the knuckles of his hammer-sized fists. "Excuse us, Nelkir, before I shout you through the door."

Lucia just dropped her face into her palm as the men exchanged a few more biting lines before Nelkir finally slipped through her office door and closed it gently behind him.

"All right," Lucia growled, crossing her arms. "You have my attention, Bram. What do you want to say?"

The Nord seemed to shrink at the half-Imperial's ire. "It's about ma," he offered.

Lucia turned darkly, gesturing for her guest to take a seat in front of the desk. The chair he dropped in creaked in protest, and the lady moved around to take a seat once more at her carved EEC desk. "Okay. I'll bite. What did you find out?"

"Ma... and pa, too... Someone told me they used to be werewolves, Lu... Is that true?"

She slowly nodded. "...Yes. It's true... who told you?"

"A traveler from Solstheim was at the tavern last week. From a place called Frostmoon. She said she knew our parents."

"-_Your_ parents," Lucia cut in.

"...she knew ma and pa. She told me they were werewolves. I asked Athis. You remember the old Dunmer? He told me the rumors were true. That pa and uncle Vilkas were cured from their beast blood. But ma... ma never was."

"So what do you want from ME, Bram?"

He scoffed at her, unbelieving. "What do I want? What do you think I want?! If ma is trapped outside of Sovngarde, we have to fix it!"

"And how do you plan to do that, you damn fool?! Walk to Winterhold College and ASK for a portal to Oblivion?!"

Bram's face pulled into a childish pout. "...I don't know what I need to do."

Lucia slammed her fist on her desk, throwing herself backward in her chair and taking to cracking her knuckles one by one. Bram let the silence sit before venturing a new topic. "...Pa talks about you, you know. He misses you. We both miss you."

A rapid sneer passed across her features as she took it in. "Don't," she commanded. "Just... don't. You're lucky I let you in the building."

Bram bit slightly at his bottom lip, a strange gesture for a figure so imposing as he.

She waved a hand at him dismissively. With every joint in each hand properly attended, she took to chewing at her nails more aggressively than she meant to. "Get to the part about why you're here."

"You're my big sister, Lu," Bram offered with his doe-like gray eyes, "Who else would I turn to?"

She gave him a slightly feral expression, she knew, but took a relaxed pose in her grand cedar chair and quietly rolled the sleeves of her tunic to her elbows. Shifting her weight, she leaned forward on her left arm - white and gnarled with the long-healed scars of fire - and took to chewing the nails of that hand with a critical stare at the cut-down warrior.

He blushed, closing his eyes against Lucia's display. When he opened them again, he avoided her. "...we're not without our problems, Lu... but you were _always_ my sister..."

The room was heavy with the apology he never could bring himself to say. "So you want me to plan your quest for you..." she guessed, eager for him to leave.

Bram shrugged lamely. "I... I know you're the Shadowlark, Lu. You're the only one with the contacts I'd need."

Her eyes shot up from her desk and caught his sharply. Like his father before him, Bram was not as dumb as he appeared. He threw up his palms in a defensive gesture.

"I haven't told anyone. And no one told me," he answered her unspoken question. "...If anyone knew where to go and how to help ma... It's you."

Lucia's eye twitched slightly. Goosebumps spread across Bram's arms as he took in the very real danger blaring in his sister's eyes.

"Get. Out." she breathed. "...Now."

The Nord blanched, his mouth suddenly dry. He silently stood from his chair and moved to the door. His hand on the embossed quartz knob, he paused a moment offering one last thing to the forgotten cadence of the ocean waves. "Let me know if you change your mind," he said before letting himself out.

Lucia shivered in the stillness Bram left in his wake. She stood, taking calming and measured breaths as she paced to regain a peace long-lost. Nonetheless, the small sob choked through her throat, and with a roar she seized the wooden clock on her desk and hurled it against her office door before sinking to the floor.

The door opened at the crash, and Nelkir - who'd been waiting and listening outside - hurried over to her. She felt the soothing weight of his body as he knelt over her crumpled form. Lucia couldn't control herself, and as her lover curled his arms around her and pulled her body into his embrace, she let herself drown in the inexplicable shame she'd held away.

* * *

Nelkir held the frail woman in his arms ever closer, bracing her shaking form against his chest. She would never know how wholly he loved her, and how her sorrow made him feel so helpless... But unbeknownst to the girl who held his heart, he shivered against the musical disembodied voice that echoed in his ears.

_"Such **beautiful** devotion, child... Such love... She is ripe to receive the sweet, sweet fruit of treachery... She's already breeding agony in those who love her. It will be a great irony for her to reap the grief she's sewn..."_

"...No..." Nelkir breathed, quieter than the sound of Lucia's broken cries as he clutched her tighter. "...Please, my Lady..."

_"Now Nelkir," _ the voice - smoother than the finest Khajiit silk - sang out poetically. _"I am your first love. Do not fight me. You were conceived in deceit, and shaped by secrets. I have been with you from the beginning, my precious Dark Child. I have cared for you, protected you, and have been your guide on this path of betrayal. Will you **now**__deny me this perfect sacrifice of broken trust?"_

A small, hot tear fell from his eye and into Lucia's hair as he rocked her. "...Mephala, not **her**," he breathed again. "I beg you, my Lady... Name me a different ally to bleed... **anyone** but her..."

* * *

**A/N: Hey guys! Ok! So I know this piece is kind of out there. This is meant to be a conceptual vignette. Namely, the idea caught me so I wrote a snapshot of that world to see how it work. It ended up being much darker than I intended it to be. The original idea was to take an orphan, and find out what that child's life would be like as an adult. I imagine growing up with the Dovakhin as your parent would have an affect. Furthermore, I wondered what impact the Dovakhin's decisions (becoming the leader of the Brotherhood and the Thieves' Guild, for example) would have on the future of the child. After all, what happens when the Dragonborn's "loose ends" come to call on the family after he/she has died. Here, Lucia has stepped into the vaccuum her mother left behind, without The Voice to help. I figured with connections like the Dragonborn has, she'd become the ultimate 'mob boss,' as it were. Inspiration was taken from Liara T'Soni in the role of the Shadow Broker. This stands as a concept-driven oneshot. I don't have plans to make a story out of this, though I'm sure it could be done. I wouldn't mind hearing other ideas on the concept: What kind of mess would the adopted children of the Dragonborn inherit? What would they grow up to become, and what Skyrim would they receive? Would it be a liberated Skyrim? One where the Sun is dead, and the creatures of the night prevail? Has Vaermina been defeated, Peryite's beloved disease causing riot in the streets, or Mehrunes on his rise to power once again with a renewed Razor? **

**Anyway! A very merry Christmas to my friend and proofreader, ShotgunHero, to whom this small piece is dedicated. Happy (belated) holidays to all of you who read this, and I'll catch you all in 2014!**


End file.
